Men's basketball: Ohio State goes cold in loss to Kansas

At one point in the second half, coach Thad Matta said he turned to his assistants on the bench and said, “Hey, let’s call a play where we score.”

Unfortunately for the Ohio State men’s basketball team, and its first sellout crowd of the season, there weren’t many of those when the Buckeyes most needed them yesterday in Value City Arena.

It was déjà vu Duke for the seventh-ranked Buckeyes as they went more than 10 minutes of the second half without a field goal and lost for the second time this season, 74-66 to No.9 Kansas.

The Buckeyes (9-2) made only nine of 36 field goal attempts in the second half and shot 30.8 percent for the game. In their only other loss, Nov.28 at Duke, they shot 33.8 percent.

“I thought we battled. I thought we played with an element of toughness and tenacity we needed to,” Matta said.

“But a lot of it just comes down to you’ve got to put the ball in the basket in a game like this, and we couldn’t do it, and it became contagious throughout.”

Deshaun Thomas led Ohio State with 16 points but got only three shots from the field in the last 14 minutes, and missed them all, while being smothered by Kansas wing Travis Releford on the perimeter and double-teamed by 7-foot Jeff Withey or another Jayhawks post player when he tried to go inside.

Thomas said he tried to free himself for more chances.

“I crashed the boards and got offensive rebounds,” he said. “I knew they weren’t going to help (off me).

“We had great looks, wide-open looks, and I trusted my teammates” to make them, he said. But, as was the case at Duke, they did not.

Shannon Scott scored 15 points, 10 of them in a first half in which he energized the Buckeyes off the bench and changed the momentum of the game.

But starting guards Aaron Craft, Lenzelle Smith and Sam Thompson were a collective 8 of 32 from the field, and LaQuinton Ross made one of five shots.

“I’m getting open looks and not making them,” Craft said. “It’s not for lack of work (or) lack of effort. All of us are in (the gym) every day trying to get better.

“Unfortunately, we’ve had some days where the ball hasn’t been going in, and that’s when we have to concentrate more on our defensive side of the ball. Our best offensive game is our transition. We did some (of that) the first half. The second half, we couldn’t.”

Scott and center Amir Williams entered the game at the first timeout and sparked a defense that fueled a 25-12 run that gave Ohio State a 31-23 lead with six minutes to play in the half.

But Williams picked up his second foul in the next minute, spent the rest of the half on the bench, and Kansas (10-1) took advantage, outscoring Ohio State 14-4 to the break.

A three-pointer by Thomas less than two minutes into the second half gave Ohio State a 40-37 lead, but the Buckeyes’ only field goals in 21 attempts in the next 16-plus minutes were two point-blank scores by Williams at the rim, one an offensive rebound.

Meanwhile, Kansas took better care of the basketball to keep Ohio State out of transition, forged a 64-52 lead with 4:37 left and did not let the Buckeyes get closer than seven down the stretch.

It was the Jayhawks’ third win over Ohio State in a little more than a year. They beat Ohio State 78-67 on Dec.10 of last year in Lawrence, Kan., and 64-62 on March 31 in the Final Four in New Orleans.

“Today’s probably the best we’ve played in the three games,” Kansas coach Bill Self said. “I thought we were really good except for about a three-minute stretch in the first half. Other than that, that was a pretty good 35 minutes we played out there.”